18
or
44. Some of the illicit consignments seized showed that the firms which exported them to India possessed guilty knowledge. For example, the drug was sent in medical consignments marked Antipyrine" or "Antifebrine" passed under the name of some other medicine which it happened to resemble. Wrappers were also seized through the post marked "samples without value," "printed matter," "newspapers," and other misdescriptions of a like character. It is stated that 90 per cent. of the cocaine illegally imported into India and Burma is manufactured in Darmstadt. Packets have been found hidden in fruit baskets, cases of matches, and other cargo, and in the coal bunkers, holds, and other parts of vessels arriving in Indian ports. The drug is most commonly smuggled ashore by lascars and firemen, but European" members of the crews have also been detected in the act of smuggling, and prosecuted to conviction. Nearly all the cocaine seized in Bombay has been exported from Trieste and Genoa by sailors and firemen of the Austrian Lloyd and Florio Rubattino Steamship Companies. The most recent reports on Excise administration in the different provinces show that smuggling is still rife, in spite of all precautions in India.
45. The proposed unification of cocaine rules throughout British India will, it is hoped, go some way towards checking the enormous amount of illicit traffic in this noxious drug. The French and Portuguese authorities also have recently, on representations made to them, taken steps to restrict the import and sale of cocaine in their territories in India. But we are fully persuaded that our efforts towards the suppression of the cocaine habit in this country will be infruc tuous until strong measures are taken to regulate the production of the drug and its congeners and to restrict its export from the chief manufacturing countries. We recommend measures similar to those discussed above in respect of opium alkaloids. The Conference can do no more valuable service to human- ity than by concerting a scheme of international action for effectually check- ing the spread of the cocaine habit, which has been proved to be as subversive of private and public morals in all countries as it is unrelenting in the grasp in which it holds its unfortunate victims.
We have the honour to be,
MY LORD MARQUIS,
Your Lordship's most obedient, humble Servants,
(Signed) HARDINGE or PENSHURST.
Schedule of Papers.
1. List of Appendices. 2. Appendices I to VIII.
15
O'M. CREAGH.
37
G. FLEETWOOD WILSON.
#
J. L. JENKINS.
22
R. W. CARLYLE.
S. H. BUTLER.
*
S. A. IMAM.
31
W. H. CLARK.
458
KAM